Three Years; Civil War?

Tomorrow, the Coalition of the Willing begins its fourth year in Iraq. The anniversary has been marked in many ways by many of the principles—by President George W. Bush, by US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, by General George Casey--the commander of US forces in Iraq--by those worldwide who continue to oppose OIF and call for its immediate end and, most notably, by former interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi. With last months attack on the (Shi’a) Golden Mosque in Samarra and the resultant upswing in violence in many parts of Iraq, the question of the day is whether an Iraqi civil war is in full swing.

In his short statement about the anniversary, President Bush pays tribute to the men and women of the US military and the sacrifices they all have made:

[T]his morning, our reflections were upon the sacrifices of the men and women who wear our uniform. Ours is an amazing nation where thousands have volunteered to serve our country. They volunteered to -- many volunteered after 9/11, knowing full well that their time in the military could put them in harm's way. So, on this third anniversary, the beginning of the liberation of Iraq, I think all Americans should offer thanks to the men and women who wear the uniform, and their families who support them.

He doesn’t mention the phrase ‘civil war.’ As a matter of fact, Nedra Pickler is concerned that the president didn’t mention the word ‘war’ at all, as if the absence actually means something. Other than that—along with a now-expected slant--there’s quite a bit of pertinent information in the article, including the back and forth from sources expected and otherwise as to the state of Iraq. Onward.

Stressing political accomplishments and dissing the terrorists, Secretary Rumsfeld takes the high and optimistic road about Iraq even though he, disappointingly, takes a mild shot at blogs, along with the Big Media.

Some have described the situation in Iraq as a tightening noose, noting that "time is not on our side"and that "morale is down." Others have described a "very dangerous" turn of events and are "extremely concerned."

Who are they that have expressed these concerns? In fact, these are the exact words of terrorists discussing Iraq -- Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his associates -- who are describing their own situation and must be watching with fear the progress that Iraq has made over the past three years.

The terrorists seem to recognize that they are losing in Iraq. I believe that history will show that to be the case.

Fortunately, history is not made up of daily headlines, blogs on Web sites or the latest sensational attack. History is a bigger picture, and it takes some time and perspective to measure accurately.[SNIP]

Consider that in three years Iraq has gone from enduring a brutal dictatorship to electing a provisional government to ratifying a new constitution written by Iraqis to electing a permanent government last December. In each of these elections, the number of voters participating has increased significantly -- from 8.5 million in the January 2005 election to nearly 12 million in the December election -- in defiance of terrorists' threats and attacks.

Then, the secretary, going all Godwin on us, cuts to the chase.

Consider that if we retreat now, there is every reason to believe Saddamists and terrorists will fill the vacuum -- and the free world might not have the will to face them again. Turning our backs on postwar Iraq today would be the modern equivalent of handing postwar Germany back to the Nazis. It would be as great a disgrace as if we had asked the liberated nations of Eastern Europe to return to Soviet domination because it was too hard or too tough or we didn't have the patience to work with them as they built free countries.

Former Prime Minister Allawi isn’t so optimistic about events in his country. In fact he asserts that the civil war has already started.

Well it’s unfortunate that we are in [a] civil war. We are losing a day, an average [of] fifty to sixty people throughout the country if not more - if this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is. [SNIP]

Maybe have not reached the [unintelligible; will fill in when a transcript is available] yet, but we are moving towards this point and we should avert the path of the country and avert getting there. [SNIP]

Sectarianism will spread throughout the region and even Europe and the United States would not be spared.

The former prime minister says also that there is a serious exodus of Iraqi citizens from the country.

General Casey estimates that Coalition troops have a few more years in Iraq. There will be fewer, obviously, with many of the partners withdrawing on schedule at the end of the year and US troops levels already having been reduced.

[TIM] RUSSERT[of Meet the Press]: […] I want to take you back to something you said almost exactly a year ago. “By this time next year - you know, you base all of your planning on assumptions. Assuming that the political process continues to go positively, and the Sunni are included in the political process, and the Iraqi army continues to progress and develop as we think it will, we should be able to take some fairly substantial reductions in the size of our forces.” So you said the process is positive, the troop development is positive. Has been, this is a year ago, and you said therefore we could reduce our troop levels.

GEN. CASEY: Right.

MR. RUSSERT: That has not happened. So what is the problem?

GEN. CASEY: It has happened, Tim. We—right after—right before Christmas we off-ramped two brigades. We did not, we chose not to bring two additional brigades into Iraq, and our, our forces are 7,000 to 10,000 less as a result of that. And so we have started that process. And that process is a process that—again, go back to your base assumptions, as long as those two things continue to hold—that process is going to continue, I expect through 2006 and into 2007. So the process has begun.

Additionally, the general disagrees with the former prime minister:

MR. RUSSERT: Former Prime Minister Allawi said yesterday that Iraq is in civil war. Is he correct?

GEN. CASEY: The prime minister’s been out of, the former prime minister’s been out of the country, Tim. I haven’t talked to him about the security situation in, in a while, frankly. But I don’t, I don’t think he’s correct. As you can imagine, we look at this very closely, and I, I do not believe, one, that we are in a civil war right now; two, nor do I believe that a civil war is imminent or necessarily inevitable.

Perhaps he’s correct, perhaps Mr. Allawi is. But note the lprime minister’s prediction: that religious war will span the globe. If the prediction is a reasonable one, will the immediate pullout or even gradual reduction of Coalition forces completed, say, by the early 2007, hasten or hinder an Iraqi civil war or such an ominous forecast for the world? That is the question that we have to ask ourselves and the question I hope that our leaders--all of them—are asking, without regard to politics.

Comments

[Michael]

Alas, I believe that religious war has already spanned the globe but most people are unwilling to accept it. The prediction, I think, really means that it's existence will become more and more difficult to ignore as the amount of scrap iron flying thru the air becomes increasingly dense.

About ten years ago I was shocked to see a war (such as it was) against genocide in Europe. It was inconciveable yet there it was.

Now in the first decade of the 20th century here we are re-fighting the Crusades.

Crap. All I really wanted was my Silver Suit.

[dadmanly]

Baldilocks, you quote Former Prime Minister Allawi:

"We are losing a day, an average [of] fifty to sixty people throughout the country if not more - if this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is."

How many people are killed in the US on any given day, due to criminal violence? How many in the countries of Europe? How many in Africa? In Columbia?

Civil War is hundreds, thousands of people killed in riots, open sect against sect violence.

God does know what Civil War is, and He also knows that human beings should know what it is all too well. And the insurgent attacks and IEDs and Al Qaeda inspired killings don't even qualify, or EVERYTHING'S A CIVIL WAR.

(Just consider any one day casualty figures in our Civil War for reference.)

[babylonandon]

I agree with dadmanly.

50 to 60 people a day in a country of 25 million?

I wonder how many people are killed in California in a day. I'll bet you the numbers are similar. If 50 or 60 killed a day was extrapolated to the population size of the US and this constitutes a civil war, then we've been at war for...probably 230 years.

I mean for God's sake! Saddamn was executing more people than that!! He was starving way more people than that.

The Stupid Media needs to either get a grip or come out and admit they are on the side of Al Qaeda. They are certainly its most effective weapon.

[Tully]

Anyone figured out yet how to tell gang warfare from "sectarian violence?"

[baldilocks]

I'm just quoting him, not (necessarily) agreeing with him or disagreeing. I'm not there, remember? Neither is he.

[Justin]

I don't think anyone would that isn't name Bush or Rumsfeld would disagree that thing are going horribly at this moment. But, predicting where things will be a year or even a month from now is a fool's game--this could be a little spurt of sectarian (or gang ;-)) violence that the Iraqi security forces put down, or it could be the start of an all out civil war, who knows. But, I wouldn't be so glib about dismissing 50-60 deaths per day in sectarian violence. The destabilizing affect of the killings matters much more than the raw numbers.

[Tully]

Here's someone not named Bush or Rumsfeld who disagrees with the "horrible" assessment, Justin. And he has a strong point--the media only brings the bad news. The good news goes unreported. Nature of the system. Sure is nice to have someone pick up where Chrenkoff left off, though.

The "civil war" scenario has been highly and hyperbolically touted for three years, and keeps not happening, so pardon me if I'm skeptical. We don't have enough information at this end to know what the killings mean, but reports from those on the ground indicate that a substantial portion are indeed gang struggles for territory. How that translates into our terms, I don't know. Obviously the gangs themselves are to a large degree faction-associated. But to some extent a portion of those killings may be stabilizing factors, not de-stabilizing ones. Not enough info.

In broader terms, there is indeed a "civil war" going on in the Mideast, but it's not confined to Iraq. The same war has been going on in fits and starts and different forms for a millenia, and we mostly only notice the one country-specific aspect. On top of that there's the bigger war--modernism versus barbarism--which has been going on just as long.

[DarkStar]

Like I've said from time to time: "leaders" need to call this what it is, World War III.

[baldilocks]

Or WW IV, actually. (Let's not forget the Cold War.)

[scott]

For everyone's information, over the last decade or so there have been approximately 15,000 to 20,000 murders a year in the US (over the last several years it has been closer to the 15,000 mark). This averages out to 41 to 54 murders a day for a nation of almost 300,000 million people. So there is a huge difference going on here.

Recently, Time magazine and other sources have written that there have been an average of 800, yes, 800 murders a month in Baghdad (a city of 5 million people, in contrast, New York City, a city of 8 million averages 93 murders a month).

Now, if this is not a civil war raging, then what is one?

[NYVETERAN]

How can you guys possibly compare a rinky-dink country like Iraq with the United States? You can't even compare them to New York City or any other major city in our country. If they had the gangs and drug dealers in Iraq that they have in NYcity, Sadamn would have been taken out a long time ago. And if Osama Bin Laden had gotten in their way, they woild have gotten him too. And if they had the cars and traffic in Iraq that they have in many of our major cities, hundreds more people would be dying every week. And as for a civil war, that startted back when Mohammedin died. When was that, in the 700s AD? Long before there was a United States. The Sunnis and the Shiites started their fighting back then, and it's been going on ever since. And since now the United States is for sale to the highest bidder, they will still be fighting long after we're gone. The local power co. here in central NY has been sold to a British CO., New Process Gear, once part of Chrysler, was sold to a Canandian Co., Dunken Donuts was sold to a French Co.And we all know Chrysler is a German Co.If China calls in the notes on the money we owe them our economy would collapse. And as you should know our government has had to borrow even more billions this week, that they never intend to pay back. Our great-grand children will be paying interest,or borrowing more money to pay off bonds and treasury notes for money we are borrowing today. And Isreal has been fighting the Arabs, with our planes, helicopter gunships and other weapons we've given them for over 50 years, and they haven't won yet. General Casey says we will need to have some troops in Iraq for several more years. Do you think he really knows what's going to happen next year, or the year after? Our leaders have been wrong so far, right down the line. But their sons and daughters aren't paying for it. Please excuse my spelling.

[Justin]

Here's someone not named Bush or Rumsfeld who disagrees with the "horrible" assessment, Justin. And he has a strong point--the media only brings the bad news. The good news goes unreported. Nature of the system. Sure is nice to have someone pick up where Chrenkoff left off, though.

OK, Bill Crawford, noted expert in, uh, writing for the national review thinks things are going well.

I agree that the media likes to play up bad news, but it's very difficult to argue that things are going "well" in Iraq now. That may change tomorrow or next month; as I said before, it's impossible to know how this will turn out. I'm still optimistic--but my optimism is based less and less on rational assessments as we get further into this thing.

[Tully]

OK, Bill Crawford, noted expert in, uh, writing for the national review thinks things are going well.

That would be a direct double ad hominem on your part, Justin. BAD Justin. If you'd bothered to actually read it to check on the substance, instead of dismissing it out-of-hand, you might have noted the lead paragraph.

I’m not, as my grandmother used to say, “trying to put lipstick on a pig.” There is a lot of bad news to reports, and I understand that. But the bad news is already being covered in the mainstream media just fine. What’s not being covered adequately is the good news. It is impossible to form an accurate opinion of the situation in Iraq unless both the progress and the failures are taken into account.

Some are intent on noting ONLY the bad news, and ignore all the good. Some want to present only the good news, and ignore all the bad. Some, like Crawford (and myself) think you need ALL the news to form an accurate opinion. Are you dedicated to option A?

[Justin]

Tully--the "toungue in cheek" tone of my comments is probably getting lost. I actually thought the article was decent.

But, a larger more serious point is that lots of people/pundits have been analyzing and influencing public opinion and the public's perception of the war, most of whom are not experts on Iraq or the middle east. From the right I'll put up Bill Kristol, Andrew Sullivan and David Brooks. You can take your pick of blowhards on the left, although the lefty blowhards didn't actually influence the discourse the way people on the right did.

In any event, it seems the bar for success in Iraq is getting set lower and lower by some supporters of the war--I, myself, support our presence there, but if Iraq turns into an Iran-friendly theocracy, I will have considered the mission to be a complete failure; if Iraq breaks out into a prolonged 1980s Afghan-style war, I will have considered the mission to be a complete failure. I'm not sure if either of those are going to happen, but unfortunately those two events are in the mix as being real possiblities.

[Tully]

Maybe we need smilies. :-)

You may be right on the bar for "success" being lowered--but the bar for "failure" has been too. Both sides are trying to claim victory from the extant reality, but the anti-war crowd requires some form of failure for political victory. Both keep redefining. The trick is not confusing popular perceptions for realities.

Me, I wanna know what's actually going on. I've never had blinders for the realities of war. All wars are different, and we succeed when we learn and improve as we go along. If we'd finished WW2 the way we started it, we'd be speaking Japanese or German right now. But that didn't make 1942 or 1943 any prettier.

Right now, we seem to be learning and improving quite well, but that doesn't mean it's over yet by any means. Iraq is the front right now, but it's just one front and we shouldn't delude ourselves into believing that the end of the Iraq engagement means the end of the war. Call it Cold War II or WW4 or whatever, this is one theater, not the whole conflict.